The Shakespeare and Company Interview

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **A series of short readings from some of our favourite poets.Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk: the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud’s major poems and letters, including generous selection of Illuminations and the entirety of his lacerating confession A Season in Hell—capturing as never before not only the meaning but also the daredevil attitudes and incantatory rhythms that make Rimbaud’s works among the most perpetually modern of his or any other generation.Buy The Drunken Boat - Selected Writings: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6010246/rimbaud-arthu-the-drunken-boatMark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, and Raymond Roussel. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and the author of eleven books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Highway 61 Revisited, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **No writer does the life-spanning novel in such a devilishly entertaining yet thought-provoking way as this week’s guest, William Boyd. His new book, The Romantic, follows the meandering, fortune-making-and-fortune-losing story of Cashel Greville Ross who travels the world, embarks on adventures, and falls in love, all across the nineteenth century. Often passionate, sometimes reckless, always psychologically fascinating, Cashel Greville Ross is both a man of his time and perhaps, in certain ways, a hero for our age.Buy The Romantic: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7736567/boyd-william-the-romantic*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **In October 2018 we were honoured to welcome Annie Ernaux to Shakespeare and Company. In conversation with Adam Biles (and interpreter Alice Heathwood), she discussed her masterpiece The Years. To celebrate Annie Ernaux being chosen as the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature we are releasing the recording of that evening as a bonus podcast today.Discover Annie Ernaux’s books here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/post/70/congratulations-to-annie-ernaux-on-winning-the-nobel-prize-for-literature*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **The protagonist of My Name is Yip is, in his own written words, “a mute”, he also stands at 4 feet 8 inches tall and again in his words, “there is not a single hair on my person.” These physical limitations, coupled with the fact that Yip lives in the state of Georgia during the early nineteenth century gold rush, might make you imagine that a brutish and limited life awaited him. And yet, through Yip Tolroy’s sheer force of character, as well as a few twists of fate, his is a story full of adventure, intensity, and human feeling. The voice of Yip is an act of extraordinary literary ventriloquism on the part of debut novelist Paddy Crewe, who so utterly inhabits not only Yip’s mind, but also his epoch, and his geography, that every page of this book hums with an authenticity so rarely achieved in historical fiction. Buy My Name is Yip here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6006015/crewe-paddy-my-name-is-yip*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Paddy Crewe was born in Stockton-on-Tees. He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. His first novel, My Name Is Yip, was published by Penguin in April 2022.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **Kamila Shamsie’s new novel Best of Friends begins in Karachi in 1988, a year that would prove pivotal in the political history of Pakistan. Zahra and Maryam are teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, finding their feet in a world where they have to keep one eye on the intrigues of the school yard and the other on the lives into which they are expecting or expected to step. Lives of vast opportunity but also uncertainty. In fact perhaps the only certainty for both Zahra and Maryam is their friendship. Rock solid since the age of four. But then something happens, or perhaps better to say almost happens, that continues to cast a shadow thirty years later when the story picks up again in London.Buy Best of Friends here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5782828/kamila-shamsie-shamsie-best-of-friends*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Bailey’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Contains outrageous spoilers about the recent Bond film No Time to Die**There are few cultural phenomena that rival the impact, reach and longevity of either The Beatles or James Bond. That both made their first significant impact on the public consciousness on the same day 5 October 1962 — with the release of the Beatles’ first record “Love Me Do’ and Dr. No the first James Bond film — was a significant enough piece of synchronicity for John Higgs to begin an investigation into the decades-long dance between two very different visions of the world, of Britain, of masculinity of art, of love and — inevitably — of death.Buy Love and Let Die here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6267356/higgs-john-love-and-let-die*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*John Higgs is a writer who specialises in finding previously unsuspected narratives, hidden in obscure corners of our history and culture, which can change the way we see the world. In the words of MOJO magazine, “Reading John Higgs is like being shot with a diamond. Suddenly everything becomes terrifyingly clear”. The Times agreed, saying that “Higgs’s prose has a diamond-hard quality. He knows how to make us relate.” “A while ago I decided to read anything Higgs writes,” said Frank Cottrell Boyce, “He seems to be able to take any subject — pop music, Watling Street, conspiracy theories, robotics — and poke at it until it yields up its secrets.” Russell Brand described him succinctly as “a great writer […] who pulls shit together in an interesting way.”Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new series of short readings from some of our favourite poets.Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2017, she completed a master’s degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. Buy Poūkahangatus: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6037217/tibble-tayi-poukahangatusIntimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), her debut volume, Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Her poems move from rhythmic discussions of the Kardashians, sugar daddies, and Twilight to exquisite renderings of the natural world and precise emotions (“The lump in her throat swelled like a sea that threatened to take him from her, and she had to swallow hard”). Tibble is also a master narrator of teenage womanhood, its exhilarating highs and devastating lows; her high-camp aesthetics correlate to the overflowing beauty, irony, and ruination of her surroundings. *SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lessons, Ian McEwan’s new novel, works from an intimate perspective, but on an epic scale. We accompany Roland Baines at different moments of his life—military brat, baby boomer, failed poet, pubescent boarder, single father, lounge pianist for hire—as he lives and relives some of the experiences—both domestic and world-historical—that moulded him. But as the years go by, and Roland’s sense of exactly how he was shaped and by whom changes, we readers come to understand how much our own apprehension of the past is tinted by our experience of the present.Buy Lessons here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7495498/mcewan-ian-lessons*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is A.M. Homes whose new novel The Unfolding invites readers into the lives of a wealthy, John-McCain supporting Republican family on the day of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, which turns into a satirical “origin story” for the MAGA movement, as well a book about families, the frustrations they fester, and the lies and compromises that sustain them.Buy The Unfolding here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7284774/homes-a-m-y-the-unfolding*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*A.M. Homes is the author of thirteen books, among them the best-selling memoir The Mistress’ Daughter; the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice, and Jack; and the short story collections Days of Awe, The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She also writes for film and television and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is Tess Gunty, winner of the 2022 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel The Rabbit Hutch.*The Rabbit Hutch is a low-cost housing complex in the post-industrial town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. It’s home to a mix of generations and familial constellations—couples, singletons, roommates—whose lives ebb and flow according to the economic and social forces that surround them, as well as the deeper-flowing currents of their pasts.It’s also home to Blandine who, we learn at the beginning of Tess Gunty’s novel—isn’t like the other residents of her building. How and, crucially, why this is the case are the questions at the heart of the book.But beyond the Rabbit Hutch, beyond Vacca Vale Indiana, beyond the United States even, The Rabbit Hutch is also a book about how our lives intersect, how our actions impact upon the lives of people we didn’t even know existed, and how a little bit of human cruelty, can go a long way but how human tenderness can go even further.Rick Moody called Tess Gunty a writer of “uncommon originality, both in terms of voice and vision” while Jonathan Safran Foer described the Rabbit Hutch as “a profoundly wise, wildly inventive, deeply moving work of art.”*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Tess Gunty was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. She received a B.A. in English with an Honors Concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, where she won the Ernest Sandeen Award for her poetry collection. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow, and her work was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, The Iowa Review, Freeman’s, and other publications, and she lives in Los Angeles.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.